Hold Everything

The pack-rat syndrome, I believe, began just after the 9GB barrier was breached.

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Lately, I've been baffled by the mess in my office, which is worse than it has ever been. I wonder if we can be turned into horrible pack rats because of developments that have changed the way we live and work. Actually, I'm convinced that this is exactly what is happening to computer users, thanks to the increased storage capacity of hard drivesas odd as that seems.

The whole thing started (coincidentally?) around the time I hooked up one of those 60GB Snap drives to my network. My total drive capacity was around 100GB, but then along came the nice 80GB Seagate Barracuda. Although I routinely move photos and other files to CDs in an attempt to keep them organized, I mostly just let the drives fill up.

Years ago, before drive capacities began to double on a yearly basis and outpace our already fast-paced improvement curve, everyone practiced good hard drive maintenance. You would see your disk filling up, so you would delete files. Nobody does that anymore; we just let things pile up until we can't recall what we have. I'm amazed by how often I start to install some new software, only to discover that I installed an earlier version years before. Sometimes I find programs I can't remember; I have to run them to figure out what they do. And when I want to run a program I know I have, I often need to search with the Windows Find utility to figure out where it is.

What we've developed over the years is a bottomless pit for storing everything. The pack-rat syndrome, I believe, began just after the 9GB barrier was breached. Once we had more than 9GB on the desktop and storage began to double every year, there was no way to keep up, no matter what we did. It took us years to use up 9 gigs, but then we were given 9 more gigs in one year, 18 more gigs the next, then 36. It's now routine to sell an entry-level machine with 40 to 60 gigs, and people are already talking about 100-plus gigabyte drives. Here are some of the implications.

Privacy is gone. There's never a reason to delete files. That means your personal life can be deconstructed, based on the accumulation of old information stored on the computer. Without honing disk management skills, as in the past, you'll be forced to move files from machine to machine in a wholesale fashion, because you won't know what to keep and what to delete.

The software code base will get worse. Nobody even talks about code bloat anymore, because the most inefficient code works just fine and takes up a relatively small amount of space. The problem is that the underlying code base will deteriorate over time because of its sheer bulk. Everything will be fixed with makeshift patches. Microsoft will be spending more time creating patches and less time creating clean code. It's inevitable.

The "who cares" attitude will prevail. We are being trained to think this way, much like spoiled trust-fund babies with more money than they can spend. You develop a strange attitude about life when you get everything you want for free. If such an odd mind-set can evolve from many stimuli (or the lack thereof), we will likely all develop the same personality quirks as aimless Eurotrash jet-setters. Does this help explain the sudden emergence of over-the-top party havens, such as South Beach and the outrageous Ibiza, Spain? Of course, there can't possibly be a connection between these places and computer hard drives. Or can there?

We'll see ancillary pack-rat behavior. If we are trained to keep everything, could this behavior naturally evolve into more complex pack-rat mechanisms, such as collecting stuffespecially useless junk? If eBay is an indication, I'd say yes. eBay is recent and associated exclusively with the Internet. But it also came along just as the 9GB barrier was broken, and it coincides nicely with the new, learned pack-rat behavior.

And who uses eBay? People with computers, obviously. You can't get to it without a computer with a Net connection. Talk about a marketing home run, thanks to a lucky coincidence. We all should have sensed that something was seriously wrong with society when the fad of collecting Beanie Babies was in full swing.

I'm sure that I've only scratched the surface of the pack-rat phenomenon. I can only hope that self-imposed personal discipline will help. That means I have to clean up my officenow!

John Dvorak is a columnist for PCMag.com and the host of the weekly TV video podcast CrankyGeeks. His work is licensed around the world. Previously a columnist for Forbes, Forbes Digital, PC World, Barrons, MacUser, PC/Computing, Smart Business and other magazines and newspapers. Former editor and consulting editor for Infoworld. Has appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, SF Examiner, Vancouver Sun. Was on the start-up team for CNet TV as well as ZDTV. At ZDTV (and TechTV) was host of Silicon...
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